


Make a Wish upon a Star

by Sylla_Headhunter



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Day 5 pls kill me, Keitor Month 2020, Lotor is a star, M/M, Pining, We have the power of Satan and Keitor on our side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:27:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22133266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylla_Headhunter/pseuds/Sylla_Headhunter
Summary: Day Five: StarsThere is nothing left in his life. Nothing, not even a wish for a shooting star Keith can see from his lonely window.
Relationships: Keith/Lotor (Voltron)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 29
Collections: Keitor Month 2020





	Make a Wish upon a Star

**Author's Note:**

> Well this prompt EXPLODED into my face. Pls forgive me an mistakes I'm tired and hungry and so, so done (although I'm quite proud of this dsfhjh do forgive me??)
> 
> Do I have a thing for Lotor being otherworldly? yes, yes I do. Will I stop writing anything like this? I will never
> 
> Shoutout to Dani for having to deal with my excessive screeching. SOUP BUBBLE <3

“ _Make a wish upon a star, and it will come true!”_

Keith glances into the dark abyss of space and time and sighs, his head coming to rest against the cold window, frost biting into his cheek. The moon paints his room with grotesque shadows of a forgotten realm, making everything seem just a bit out of place. Gone are the books he pours over during the day. Gone are the few possessions he actually calls his own – gone, replaced by a cold smile high up in the sky. His heart aches with the bitter touch of melancholy and loss, one he cannot name. The loss of his childhood innocence? The loss of a world he thought safe and fulfilling?  
A star winks out of existence and Keith watches it fall with the vague detachment of a dreamer lost in his own mind. His mother’s voice, playful and full of a laughter he never quite understood, weaves in and out of thoughts dreadfully empty of joy, leeching of colour.

“ _Keith! Make a wish! Hurry, hurry!”_

His eyes slip close without him wanting to and he feels more than sees his breath fogging up the glass in front of him.

_I don’t have any left, Mom._

He turns his back to the black sky overhead and lets himself tumble into the embrace of blissful forgetfulness his dreams have become after his fourth description. He knows he shouldn’t rely on them to sleep, not all the time, but there is a yawning emptiness threatening to unravel him and he doesn’t trust his dreams to sew him back together like he does the small bottle of mottled pills.

“Good night, Mom.” He touches the silver picture frame capturing one last laugh on his night stand before snapping his fingers and turning off the light with the sound command. Darkness swallows him whole before he can even think of positioning his head on his pillow.

If he dreams, he doesn’t remember them.

His alarm clock tries to spear his thoughts some hours later, rousing him from the peaceful nothingness until he slaps it with his left hand, almost making it hit the wall. His brain rattles against his skull, angry at being kept inside apparently, and he drags one hand across his face, groaning into his fingers until the headache starts to subside, allowing him to open his eyes and blink around the empty room.

The eeriness from last night is gone, replaced by mundane chaos, a mirror to the one clogging up his soul.

“Fuck”, he groans as his foot hits the cold ground, followed by an even louder curse word when he stubs his toe on something he probably threw on the ground last night. The pain rips the fog apart that’s threatening to keep him in a hazy state of indifference and makes him realize that he is truly awake and still part of this damnable world.

Someone clears his throat.

“What a nice way of waking up”, a voice remarks, soft and cool like damp silk, wrapping itself around Keith in a surprising embrace. He snorts.

“Mind your own business-”  
The words catch in his throat as he wheels around, almost losing his balance and toppling face-first on to the floor. The man sitting on his window sill raises one of his immaculate eyebrows, half a smile painted on his face.

“Apologies”, he adds, and Keith feels his cheeks grow hot because this stranger is _mocking him._ On top of being in his house at the ungodly hour of 5 am.

“Who the fuck are you?”, he grounds out, hand fumbling for his phone. “Get out of my house, you fucking creep!”  
The man blinks, pale blue eyes closing for half a second, his head cocked to one side.

“I do not intend to engage in sexual intercourse with you – that is, it is common courtesy to _ask_ first. I am perfectly willing should you have a desire to do so.”  
“What! No!”, Keith manages to get out, choking on nothing. “What the hell, I don’t want … I’m calling the police, you fucker!”  
The man sighs, brow furrowed in deep thought.

“Apologies”, he repeats, voice softening. “It has, ah, been a while since I last got in contact with someone of your kind. There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding. I am not here to inconvenience you, though if that is the case, I will gladly erase my presence and give you the peace of mind you crave.”  
_Your kind?_

Keith feels a headache threaten to undo him, one of his hands pinching the bridge of his nose. This has to be some kind of elaborate joke, right? Someone thinks it’s fine to mess with the lonely gay in apartment 13b. Great. His fingers curl into a loose fist dangling next to his body.

“Listen, I don’t care who you are but this isn’t funny, alright? Just. If someone’s paying you to mess with me, tell them I cried and threw my coffee cup at you and take the fucking money. I’ve had it.” He presses the words out as if they were lodged inside his throat, not looking at the strange man but rather his own feet, his anger turned sour, a festering pit sitting in his stomach. This morning is just everything he never needed, honestly.

“Why would I take money to ridicule you?” Surprise echoes through those words and Keith feels his temper rise again, clawing at his throat.

“Well, if you’re having that much fun doing it, you’re probably doing it for free, huh?”, he growls, fingernails biting into the tender meat of his palm. “Great. Just my luck. Can you at least piss off until midday or something?”  
A pregnant pause hangs in the air until the man heaves a sigh, soft and delicate like a dragonfly’s wing.

“Very well. I will erase my presence until midday for your comfort.”  
Keith spins around, almost losing his balance on the carpeted floor. “Fuck, no! I don’t want-!”  
The air he is screaming at is as empty as it had been yesterday.

Work is hell – it’s nothing new, just another monotone conclusion he’s been drawing for the past five years, a bleak nothingness swallowing his day and eating almost half of it. His break arrives and Keith just collapses into his usual seat at the small café, his sketchbook scattering to the ground. Cursing, he bends down to retrieve it, only to almost jump out of his seat at the elegant hand already snatching it up and holding it out to him. Pale blue eyes greet him over a somewhat apologetic smile.

“You dropped this”, the man from this abysmal morning tells him. Keith feels the sudden need to become a serial killer or drown himself in his lukewarm coffee.

“That I did”, he hisses, quietly enough to not cause a scene even though he would like to do just that. “Give it back.” And he snatches the sketchbook out of the man’s hand, scowling at him from underneath his bangs.

The man just smiles indulgently and seats himself across the table, back immaculately straight and hands folded in front of him. Keith’s left eyebrow twitches.

“What are you doing here”, he grounds out. The man blinks.

“I am sitting in front of you”, he replies readily. “Waiting for the chance to introduce myself. I hope you can excuse my poor manners from today’s morning.”  
“So you’re not done mocking me?”, Keith hisses between his clenched teeth. The stranger looks stricken for a split second, his face smoothing out shortly after.

“I wouldn’t dare mock you.”  
And Keith finds himself yearning for the ring of truth the words seem to have, a truth threatening to unravel the cold he has wrapped around his own heart to spare himself the pain of having to experience his everyday life. Those eyes rest on his, carrying a sense of otherworldly beauty he can’t even fathom and he blurts out his name without even realising it.

“I’m Keith.”  
A smile blooms on the other man’s face, knowing and soft, and his voice seems to caress Keith’s entire being until he feels his hands relaxing again for the first time in months.

“My name is Lotor. It is my pleasure to meet you, Keith.”

“This is utterly disgusting.”  
Keith snorts, his coffee almost spilling all over his lap. Lotor’s face is crinkled up into a mask of pure revulsion, peering down into his cup as if it had insulted his mother. The brown coffee stares back, almost smugly in its debatable texture of brown goo and sugary slime.

“It’s not that bad”, Keith grins and downs his own cup in a heartbeat, nearly choking on its content at Lotor’s horrified squawk.

“Do you possess a certain lack of self-preservation, Keith?”, the bigger man sputters and promptly drowns the wilting plant on their table with a swig of coffee from his cup, apparently unwilling to drink even one more drop. “This is abhorrent. I did not know you humans were lacking in so many things, including your sense of taste!”

It is not the first time Lotor has addressed him and apparently everyone around him as “you humans” and it is intriguing Keith to no end – after the initial feeling of mistrust it has fuelled in him.

“You sound like an alien, you know that, right?”  
Lotor’s eyebrow shoots up. “Oh? Why, pray tell?”  
Keith shakes his head, an amused smirk on his lips. “Always going on and on about ‘you humans’. Is that some sort of trick to get me to ask about your life in space or something?”  
“I do not live in space”, Lotor answers, tilting his head to one side and looking incredibly endearing doing so. “And there is certainly no trick to my words, do believe me.”  
Keith swallows nervously and manages a curt nod before dropping his gaze on to his sketchbook again. His fingers are itching – for the first time in days, if he is being honest – but he doesn’t dare indulge them. He is sitting in a café, across from a stranger he has found in his room and who he knows almost nothing about, save from his name, and he wants to paint him so badly his hands are shaking.

He feels like a drowning man sitting next to a picture of an oasis, water sparkling gently in the sunlight and he can’t get up.

A hand stretches towards him and brushes over his knuckles, as light as a feather, and blue eyes seem to reach into the depths of his soul, dusting off the bruises as if they were just stains of charcoal on a crumpled parchment.

“Do not hesitate to tell me of your wishes, Keith. I would like to indulge them, as much as I can.”  
The words make him blush furiously and he almost jerks his hand back (he would like to, really, but the soft contact feels _nice,_ inexplicably so, cool fingers drawing idle over his scraped knuckles).

“What the hell, Lotor”, he rasps, not daring to meet the man’s eyes. “You can’t just say something like that.”  
The man sighs. “Apologies”, he mutters sheepishly. “It seems I am not yet accustomed to your habits as much as I would like to. However, I am sincere in my intentions. Please understand that.”

“I don’t”, Keith feels himself answer honestly, eyes finally willing to look at the man in front of him. Lotor’s eyelashes cast shadows on to his high cheekbones, his eyes darkened until they resemble the sky on a road trip’s night in the desert.

“I want to draw you”, he blurts out and Lotor blinks before a dazzling smile curves around his lips, painting stars into his eyes.

“I would love to indulge that simple wish”, he says, voice low, and Keith blushes even harder for no one should be that happy about someone wanting to paint them after their first meeting?! It’s weird.

“Great”, he croaks instead and watches Lotor nod eagerly, that damned smile still on his face, before dropping his gaze to his sketchbook and daring to open it with one hand, his other still captured by slender fingers drawing soothing circles on it over and over again. Silence settles between them, broken only by the scratching of a pen on thick paper.

It feels like one piece of the puzzle that is his life, one he has been missing for years, is finally beginning to fit into a place he never knew he had.

It feels like hours, like minutes passing by ever so slowly, like time has ceased to exist for this day and it brings a shy smile to Keith’s lips, just as he is about to close his sketchbook and preserve the imagine in front of him – Lotor’s eyes are fluttered close, his breaths evened out and Keith has no idea if he is sleeping or not … but either way, it is terribly endearing to see a stranger trusting him so much. It is also frightening, if he is being honest for he himself feels almost physically unable to mistrust the man in front of him.

The sketchbook slams shut and breaks the spell, Lotor’s eyes opening to the pale blue Keith has been drowning in for a while now. A smile curls around the man’s lips and he stretches his limbs, his mane of silvery light cascading down his back. Keith fights the urge to capture one of the strands with his hand, stuffing both of them into his pockets and standing up rather abruptly.

“I’m done”, he announces roughly, throwing his sketchbook into his bag. Lotor blinks and nods before following suit, his movements graceful like a cat’s.

“What do you wish to do now, Keith?”, he asks, a hint of curiosity blending into his smooth voice. It’s like the question is prying him open with a gentle yet unrelenting grip and Keith finds himself bursting out, once again.

“A museum.”  
He hasn’t been to one since … forever, it feels like and yet his lips form the words as if the idea had been lingering on his mind for far longer. Lotor nods, a somewhat fond expression creeping on to his face.

“I have never been to a museum. Pray tell: is there anything I need to be careful of?”  
Keith feels a laugh bubbling up his throat and shrugs, trying to contain it even though it weaves through his words tinted in sepia and drops a hint of colour on to them. “Just don’t make a lot of noise and pay for our ticket. That’s all.”  
“I will manage that, then”, Lotor concedes, obviously pleased. It makes Keith snort before he can even think of feeling nothing at all.

The entrance hall alone seems to impress Lotor greatly and Keith has to impatiently grab for his hand and pull him along – “come _on,_ Lotor, we’re not here to ogle at architecture, you idiot!” – telling himself that he is not enjoying the smooth texture that is Lotor’s hand, slender fingers almost intertwined with his. He drops it rather unceremoniously after a short while, cheeks flushed and breath short but Lotor doesn’t seem to notice – he is enchanted with a piece of art marking the entrance to a gallery filled with charcoal sketches, eyes drinking in every detail, just as Keith can’t help but look at him, at the way his eyes light up, at the way his fingers instinctively try and touch the painting, only to jerk away at the “Do not touch” sign in front of it.

He wants to paint him again.

It is his enchanting presence that leads him to forget the artist who taught him everything about charcoal sketches until his gaze falls on to a golden plaque underneath one he is achingly familiar with and his throat closes up, colours leeching from his world until everything fades to grey again.

“Keith?”  
A soft voice, carrying a worried timbre but he can’t seem to answer, eyes locked on to a single name in violent desperation – until cool hands cup his cheeks and turn his head towards someone else with surprising strength. Lotor’s eyebrows are pinched in worry, eyes soft and questioning.

“Are you alright?”  
Keith swallows a bitter laugh threatening to undo him and shakes his head as much as he can with his face still in Lotor’s hands.

“No”, he breaths and the truth of it all feels like ripping off a band aid in one fell swoop. Suddenly, he feels himself unable to stop talking, everything rushing out of him in a babbled cacophony of sound – how his mom took care of him, how she loved him and he her, how she showed him how to draw and how she erased herself from his life on a fateful rainy day while trying to cross the street in front of a lurching car unable to slow down. Lotor doesn’t interrupt, he only listens, his face soft and solemn and so, so sad it makes Keith want to cry – and he does, moments later, his heart aching in his chest as it spills over his cheeks and on to Lotor’s hands.

“I miss her”, he finally croaks and Lotor hums his agreement.

“I understand that”, Lotor murmurs softly into the silence stretching between them. “I wish I could fulfil that wish of yours but even my powers have limits.” Honest regret colours his words a dark shade of blue.

They remain like this for an eternity, frozen in time and regret and silence until Keith finally manages to breathe again, shoulders sagging in relief. Lotor lets go of his face, his expression soft, and for one fleeting moment, Keith wishes he had let his hands stay where they were before. He feels lighter, all of a sudden, his heart trying to float for the first time in what feels like to be from another lifetime.

“Thanks.”  
He manages a small smile. Lotor returns the favour, eyes pale blue against dark skin.

“You are most welcome, Keith.”  
And he feels like he is. Another first in a long time of his monotone life. Another star to light up the bleak darkness his life has become.

It is not much but it is more than he has ever called his own.

“Now this is what I call art.”  
So he may be a bit drunk but who is there to stop him? Keith feels a small giggle travel into his mouth like a soap bubble and he lets it escape through opened lips, head thrown back, as he stares up at the nightly sky. Lotor is by his side – well, he is guiding him by touching his elbow very gently, nodding indulgently.

Keith feels his heart jump in his chest.

“The stars are beautiful”, he whispers and it brings tears to his eyes yet again, as if they had decided to unleash all of their tears in one beautiful dream – because this has to be a dream, right? This …. feeling, almost crushing him, almost bringing him to his knees – he hasn’t had that much of it in a lifetime.

Lotor is still smiling, one of his fingers reaching for Keith’s cheek to wipe his misery away, just like he did the entire day. His skin emanates a soft, ethereal glow and Keith finds himself tracing a pattern on the other man’s wrist, swirling star dust underneath his finger tips.

“You are art”; he breathes and Lotor’s breath hitches for the first time in forever. It makes Keith smile, smile like the sun settled on his face.

“Lotor-”, he starts to say, but the man shakes his head, a fond expression settling between pinched brows.

“I am glad.”  
Keith struggles to keep up, his mind hazy from both alcohol and something he can’t place, his heart stuttering every now and then.

“Glad for what?”, he finally manages to ask and is greeted with a smile that seems to steal the moon from the sky. It leaves him breathless and somewhat weak.

“I am glad”, Lotor continues, seemingly oblivious to Keith’s mental capacities after that dazzling smile, “that you can finally see beauty where it belongs.” His hand brushes against Keith’s chest, his eyes capturing the moon once more. “In here.”  
Keith blinks and tries to sit up from where he is – he has no idea how he came to be on a park bench, if he is being honest – his mind an utter mess. The alcohol is most definitely not helping.

“What are you talking ‘bout?”, he slurs. “You sound like. I don’t know. What’s going on?”  
Lotor sighs, even though his lips wear his smile almost like a mask.

“I am glad that you have regained your capability of wishing on a star, Keith”, he says, “even if I have to bid you farewell for that.”  
His skin _does_ glow, even after the effect of his more-than-juice beverage is wearing off from the shock these words give him. He doesn’t look human any more – he looks like a galaxy made flesh, like god hand-picked a bouquet of stars and moulded them into the shape of a man.

He looks like nothing from this earth.

“Lotor, what are you talking about?”, he manages to get out, involuntarily repeating himself. Soft, tender eyes meet his.

“I came to this earth, like we all do, from time to time”, Lotor begins, his voice raising and lowering like a lilting melody. “To bring humankind the ability to _wish upon a star_.”  
Keith might as well be truly frozen, for he can’t find it in him to move even one muscle, eyes wide and staring unblinking at the man in front of him.

“I perceived wishes, a thousandfold, and they warmed my heart because Keith – ah, humans can be wonderful creatures, truly. They wish for the humblest of things in a world full of darkness and terror, just to keep on living for another day – just to keep on bringing joy and good fortune into their lives and the lives of their loved ones.”  
Those blue eyes remain fixed on Keith’s face and he wonders absent-mindedly how he must look like. The only thing he can feel is coldness snuffing out the light inside him with an iron fist.

“And then I heard yours.”  
Lotor’s voice turns soft, so soft that Keith feels his body shudder involuntarily.

“You lost your wish and it broke my heart.”  
_Please. Stop._

He doesn’t want him to stop either, though – he fears for the spell to break, fears for the other man, the _star_ sitting on a park bench at 1 am, to leave and take every single streak of colour with him into the sky.

Lotor leans in, his next word a soft whisper.

“I took it upon myself to let you make a wish again.” His eyes crinkle in an endearing smile and it breaks and soothes Keith’s heart all in one. “And I succeeded, did I not?”  
He can only nod, his mind freezing every word he might have left inside of him. Lotor laughs and the sound pierces Keith’s heart so utterly and completely that he feels like a supernova about to explode.

He is in love and he aches.

He is in love and he cries.

He is in love with a star, and it makes him want to stay alive for another day. And another. And another.

And the star fades in front of his eyes, a ringing laughter almost covering the words dropping from his lips like liquid silver.

“ _Make a wish upon a star, Keith.”_

The world tilts, its axis broken into pieces. Keith’s eyes go wide, too wide and then he is rushing to his feet, trying desperately to catch on to star dust gathering between his fingertips, painting his skin with silver and blue and Lotor.

“I wish!”, he croaks, the words tumbling from his lip like the tears springing from his eyes yet again.

“I wish! You stupid idiot! I wish upon a star and I wish for you to stay _right where the fuck you are right now_!”  
Time stops and air wheezes out of his lungs. His cheeks feel red – from the cold, from his blush, from his love and the desperate, desperate need for air – and his heart hammers in his chest. He feels like falling and he tries to catch himself, eyes going wide and feet stumbling, a marionette without its strings.

Until slender hands catch his arms and steady him.

Until swirling galaxies bloom upon his pale skin.

Until a voice, soft and breathless and so, so full of wonder, breathes, “I am here, Keith.”  
He sobs, letting his head fall on to Lotor’s chest, his hands grabbing for something, anything, until Lotor catches them and lets them rest on his back so that Keith can hug him fully, head burrowed in his chest.

“I am here, Keith.”  
It is a confirmation and a question and Keith manages to tilt his head back. Pale blue eyes are looking at him, wonder and softness mingling into their own galaxy.

“I have never”, he whispers, “seen a human use a wish for the star they wished on.”  
And Keith, feeling irredeemably bold and breathless and _alive,_ leans in to Lotor’s embrace, tilting his head up and lets their lips meet, sweet and timeless and heartwrenching.

“I used it for myself”, he sighs against cool lips tasting like every dark space between a single speck of light in the entire universe. Lotor laughs, his breath ghosting over Keith’s face with a silent promise, his forehead pressing against his. Keith feels himself smile, fragile and evanescent.

“ _Make a wish upon a star, and it will come true!”_

 _It did, Mom_ , he thinks later on, Lotor resting his head on his lap, eyes fluttered close and deep asleep while Keith cards his fingers through his hair, revelling in the soft velvet flung out across his sheets.

_I made a wish and it came true._

Sleep comes easy that night, for the first time in a long, long while.


End file.
